“So, is he…?”
Did I want him dead? I couldn’t decide. He couldn’t hurt me anymore if Leighton had shot him in the head, but why did he deserve a quick death when he never would have given that to me?
“Not dead,” Leighton said.
I tried to place how I felt about that. Not relieved. I’d cared about him when we were children, but he’d stopped feeling like family a long time ago.
“Where is he, if he’s not dead?” I asked.
Maybe it was better for him to be dead. I couldn’t have him near me, his threats constantly hanging over my head. He would never stop.
“Across the country, bonded to a pack.”
“The alphas aren’t the nicest, from what we’ve found,” Ambrose added.
Across the country? I had no concept of how far that was. What length of flight was it? How long would it take to drive? Could he easily come back?
I bit my lip, trying to stifle my fear over the possibilities—his new alpha pack could be as unkind as he was, and bring him back to take me.
Mercury growled, always the most attuned to how I felt since I’d claimed him.
“He’s never coming back here,” he muttered. “The pack controls him. He was sold to them, like your family was trying to sell you.”
“But won’t they want to keep him happy?”
Dash snorted, pulling me closer to him. The skin to skin contact soothed me. “Tobias doesn’t have as much power as he seems to, little omega. The pack who bit him in is as feral as he claimed all alphas were. They don’t give a fuck about a beta’s feelings.”
I hadn’t thought there were packs like that.
With everything my father and brother had made up, I’d assumed that was one of the things.
“Oh. He can’t come back, then?”
“Never, dove,” Leighton confirmed. “And your father isn’t going to touch you, either. He’s controlled by Soren now.”
My original saviour. Another man with an agenda, but at least his agenda had worked in my favour, and still was.
I curled into Dash, nibbling my bottom lip.
“What about the Ashby pack?”
That got growls from all my alphas.
The bite mark on my neck was healing well, but tingled from time to time as a reminder. I’d had to keep it covered because my mates couldn’t look at it without rage spiking through the bond.
I didn’t fear the Ashby pack, though. I feared what they’d done, but not them.
“They haven’t seen any consequences,” Leighton said through gritted teeth. “They all left the house before the police arrived. Did you want anything to happen to them, dove? After what they did to you…”
My head was shaking before I’d decided. “No. They were coerced into it. I think they’re being punished enough.”
“We couldn’t find any evidence of how they were blackmailed,” Mercury said. “It’s possible they did it by choice.”
No. Cordian’s expression had been too full of regret, and far too relieved when Leighton turned down the bond. Something forced them. I’d had the chance to shoot Cordian outside the family home, and I hadn’t taken it. My brain had been muddled, but it had been a choice I’d made as consciously as possible.
There was no need to take it back now.
“I don’t want to ever see them again,” I said. I couldn’t count on my ability to keep Nyla in her sheath if I did. “They can live their lives, though.”
